Rice University President David Leebron and Athletics Director Rick Greenspan will host a public forum Jan. 19 to discuss plans to raise funding for football facilities and other priorities for Rice Athletics. The forum will be held 6:30-8 p.m. in Stude Concert Hall in Rice’s Alice Pratt Brown Hall.

Topics will include the vision for athletics as Rice enters its second century, the rapidly changing landscape of college athletics and the challenges it presents to Rice, and the recent approval by the Rice Board of Trustees of a proposal to raise funds for a new $44.5 million football facility and other enhancements to Rice Stadium.

Who: Rice University President David Leebron and Athletics Director Rick Greenspan.

What: Public forum to discuss plans to raise funding for football facilities and other priorities for Rice Athletics.

In 2012 Rice University will embark on a yearlong Centennial Celebration to mark its 100th anniversary. The celebration will be capped by a series of events Oct. 10-14 that includes Rice’s Oct. 13 homecoming game against the University of Texas, San Antonio.

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Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its “unconventional wisdom.” With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is less than 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for “best value” among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf.